


The French Siren

by Kissed_by_Circe



Series: Where Women Become Queens [1]
Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-16 07:50:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14160150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissed_by_Circe/pseuds/Kissed_by_Circe
Summary: She always dreamt of writing enough poems to fill a book, and so she settles in Paris, in a small apartment in Belleville-Menilmontant with books and cushions on the floors and windowsills and posters instead of wallpapers.Modern Tudors AU, part of "Where Women Become Queens"





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I changed most names, and added a list of all characters at the end. 
> 
> English is not my first language, so please forgive me all the grammar and spelling mistakes.

Anaïs Boleyn is only eight when her father sends her away. She won’t be afraid, she tells herself, and she won’t cry, not in front of her family or the stewardess who’s going to be responsible for her during the flight, and definitely not in front of the other passengers with the fancy clothes and stern looks on their faces. The wind’s tearing on her hair, pulling strands out of the tight braids her sister did early in the morning, and Anaïs briefly wonders who will do her hair in the future. Madame Asturias, or one of the older girls? And who will they be, these other girls, her future classmates? Will they like her?

Then she’s pulled out of her thoughts by Marianne. Her sister’s crouching down – she’s so much taller than her, and prettier too – and wraps her soft arms around her tightly. It surprises her, to say the least, because they were never close, being eight years and, sometimes, worlds apart, and it scares her, because it means this isn’t just a dream. This is happening. She’s leaving her family, her home, everything she’s ever known. She’s afraid, so afraid, of everything, but she’s going to be brave, to act like this is nothing.

Her father looks as stern as ever, and when he tells her to be good, she nods and glances over to where Marianne is standing. She remembers how her sister came home more than a year ago, with slouching shoulders and, as her mother said, a bad reputation, and she vows to never let her parents down. She’ll be a good girl.

•

She’s 15 when she returns to the states for the first time, for Marianne’s wedding. It’s strange, walking through a town she once knew as well as the back of her hand, and getting lost in streets she once used to walk down with her eyes closed. The people are different, too, seemingly more American, at least she thinks they are. She doesn’t belong there, which her slight accent caused by years of speaking French, her European clothes, her years of breathing French air and cigarette smoke.

In France, she felt like an American, in the states, she feels like a French girl. It’s confusing, and when she stands in the heat of New Orleans clad in a black pencil skirt with silk stockings and a pearl necklace and looks at the girls she went to elementary school with, at their hot pants and flip flops and bleached hair, she feels so out of place she can’t take it.

She loves her family, and she’s always happy when they skype or when they come to France every summer like they did for decades, but while shopping tours in Paris and hiking in the Normandy and sunbathing near Marseille feel familiar, chatting in their living room and sitting at their dining table in the house she grew up in make her feel out of place. The wedding is just as beautiful as Marianne, but Anaïs feels far far away from everything, and when she steps out the airplane two days later and inhales the smoke and scent of Paris, she’s happy. She’s home again.

•

Her life in France is perfect. Petit Boleyn, they call her, her classmates and friends and Madame Asturias; Hepburn and Siren, the boys on the streets yell after her. She wears short skirts and kitten heels, her trademark pearl necklace wrapped around her slender neck, a cigarette between her ink stained fingers. She lives of black coffee and poems and kisses stolen in dark corners.

Her friends are ether funny and charming like Claudine, or smart and mature like Rita, and they are older than her, all of them. They’re living fast and reckless, dancing through the night in sequined tops, writing their numbers on strangers’ palms with liquid eyeliner. Anaïs’ days are quieter, filled to the brim with studying, writing poems, practicing her singing, sketching dresses, doing sports. She’s young, she’s free, her parents are an ocean away and she’s in Paris, the city of art and fashion and love.

Her style makes her look older, and she feels so too, more mature, with her list of boyfriends, written in her diary with pink ink, seemingly endless and scandalous because there’s one in Paris and one in Lyon and one in Marseille, all at the same time; with the countless weekends spent in Amsterdam, giggling into her palm and stuffing her face with curly fries; with her daily studying hours filled with headaches and black coffee and marks left on her nose by horn-rimmed glasses.

•

Having to return after her graduation feels like a punishment for her. She’s a good student, she’s always been, and she can’t quite understand why she has to go to an American university when she could go to a French college instead. It’s hard, oh so hard for her, to go to a strange country, to leave the place she spent more than half her life at, behind.

Her parents are still her parents, but it’s Madame Asturias she asks for help, Marianne and Georges are still her siblings, but she feels closer to Rita and Claudine and the girls at the boarding school. She feels like a tourist. Her thoughts and dreams and poems are in French, and she struggles with the first language she learned, not knowing words and having problems with a pronunciation that’s different from what she spoke like for more than a decade.

Her room at home is still the same, pale pink wallpapers and stuffed toys and plush and furniture way too small for her. She hangs her dresses and skirts and blouses into her old closet, lays her pearls and lipsticks and mascara on the dressing table, but her things don’t belong there into this little girl’s room, they are too dark and too elegant. The horrible plush pillows at least baffle her sobs, but her makeup leaves stains all over them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anais Boleyn = Anne Boleyn (*1505) 
> 
> Madame Asturias = Margarete Von Österreich (*1480) 
> 
> Marianne Boleyn = Mary Boleyn (*1499) 
> 
> Claudine = Claude De France (*1499) 
> 
> Rita = Marguerite De Navarre (*1492) 
> 
> Georges Boleyn = George Boleyn (*1504)
> 
> And thanks for the kudos <3


	2. II

University is, as it turns out, not as bad as Anaïs feared it would be. Her uncle pays the caution for a small apartment, and with a roommate she’s able to afford it. Nancy’s nice, helping her adjust to the American way of life, showing her around campus, agreeing to picking up a dog at the local shelter. She’s gets to pick the name for the border collie pup, calling him Pourquoi.

Somehow, she manages to adapt a new lifestyle and fit in – she’s after all extremely charismatic and wraps people around her fingers as easy as her necklaces – and everything is, if not perfect, at least okay. That is, until she meets Tudor. Being dragged to some frat party the night before her assignment is due – she’s finished it, but she wants to proofread it and add some details to it – is not her definition of a fun night out, but according to Nancy it’s the party of the year and so she is forced into a mask, wings and a pair of white high heels Marianne borrowed her, two numbers too big for her feet and a few inches too high for her liking.

The heels will be her downfall, she thinks, and she’s right, stumbling over some guy’s ridiculously long legs in the dim light. He catches her before she hits the ground, and she’s thankful, until he tries to flirt with her, his voice slurry, his breath smelling of cheap booze and red plastic. It’s gross, he’s gross, and so she walks out as dignified as possible while dragging a drunk Nancy with her, and tries to forgets about him.

•

Four days later he starts liking her Facebook statuses and reblogging her Tumblr posts. Hal Tudor’s been on Facebook for years, but his blog is mere days old and named GoldenTudorKing. She almost spits her café-au-lait in her friends face when she sees the list of comments he left – 99+ in three days. He’s trying to seduce her, but ends up annoying the hell out of her.

She can’t get work done at the library anymore, cause he’s there, standing too close to her, his breath on her neck, his whistling in her ear, making her head ache. Her favourite café, the only one in town that sells clafoutis like the ones she became addicted to in France, made her fell at home with its walls covered in posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the vintage furniture, but when she enters and Tudor’s there, waiting by the counter, wearing a teal suit and an arrogant smile, she stops going there.

•

The best part of the day is early morning, Anaïs is sure of that, and starting a day with coffee, fresh air, new thoughts and a long walk with Pourquoi means it will be a good day. That is, until Tudor shows up near her apartment almost every morning, jogging around her block in ridiculously tight shorts and, sometimes, even shirtless, sitting on the stairs in front of her building with two paper cups. She never takes the coffee he offers her.

He’s attractive, tall and muscular, but he’s frightening as well. She always had a small pepper spray on her in Paris, but now she gets a bigger bottle, and a whistle as well, and she only leaves her apartment when Nancy or Pourquoi are with her. When her uncle gives him the spare key and she is met with hundreds of roses and a violin after sprinting up the stairs because she was afraid he’d be in the hallway, she loses it.

A restraining order is filled against him, his lawyers pay her a generous sum for not making anything of what happened public, and she stops talking to her uncle. Her hands get sweaty for years when she sees a man in a blue suit, or catches a glimpse of red hair, or when a man walks behind her on an empty street, but she manages to live a normal life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nancy = Nan Gainsford (*1495) 
> 
> Mared Wyatt = Margaret Wyatt (*1506)


	3. III

Her life goes back to normal. Studying, writing, blogging. Her grades are good, she manages to write for some online magazines, and with poetry slams and some essays posted on her blog she’s slowly but surely making a name of herself. She settles in, making new friends, meeting old ones again – Mared Wyatt, who used to be her best friend in kindergarten, goes to Pembroke college, too, so they see each other daily – and keeps in touch with her girls in France, visiting them every summer.

Her love life improves after Tudor stops stalking her. She starts dating Hank Percy, who’s everything a girl could ever dream of – tall, handsome, smart, and he’s five years her senior, not a childish boy like the ones that constantly hit on her. They spend some wonderful months together, but when she stands on his doorstep on a rainy night, her hair a mess, her eyes red, a pregnancy test with two awfully pink lines in her trembling hands, he leaves without a trace.

They won’t see each other for years. When they meet again, on a dinner party more than a decade later, he’s been unhappily married for years to Polly Talbot, who’s as plain as she’s cynical. Polly’s tipsy on wine – she’s been drinking the whole time – and he tells her he wants her back. He never asks about the child, and she’s can’t remember why she loved him.

•

Her parents are mortified, call her a whore worse than Marianne, and throw her out. Hank’s parents’ reaction is better. His father offers her money – he doesn’t care whether he pays for an abortion, or child support – and his mother is real sweet, and wants to help her, buys clothes and offers to babysit. She moves out of her apartment, and in with Marianne. Bill, her brother-in-law, isn’t happy about it, but she does chores and takes care of her niece and nephew – Trina and Emery are four and two, and sweet children, and she hopes her child will be as perfect as they are.

•

Her daughter is born in fall, on a day as golden as her hair, her skin paler than the ivory-coloured wool of the crocheted blanket Mared, her godmother, wrapped her in, her eyes as black as her mother’s, and not sharing a single trait with her absent father, and when Anaïs sees her for the first time, she cries like a child. She’s only 21 herself, and now she’s responsible for this little babe, this delicate angel.

Tess, she’ll be called, Teresa Marianne Boleyn, after Tess of the D’Urbervilles and her aunt. She’s overwhelmed, to say the least, and so terrified. Her mother doesn’t want to have anything to do with her daughter or grandchild – she calls the little one a bastard, and Anaïs certainly doesn’t want that bigot anywhere near her baby – but Marianne helps her, and Mared and Nancy volunteer as babysitters. Her brother acts as a nanny, always there, being the father Tess doesn’t have. With their help, she’s able to get her college degree, and she even continues writing – not as much as she used to, but enough for her to get some job offers, one of which she accepts.

They live a nomadic life, staying with Marianne and Bill, until they get a divorce, because he’s not sure if their children are actually his, moving in with Georges afterwards, and leaving him when he gets a boyfriend, not wanting to disturb their young love, so it’s not difficult for Anaïs to pack their things and their dog when Tess is five, to travel the world as a reporter for an online magazine. Marianne is married again, Georges is engaged, her parents won’t talk to any of them, since they’ve all fallen from grace, and so the two remaining Boleyn-girls leave everything behind and catch the next flight to Europe.

They go on adventures, travel the world, meet interesting people and Anaïs writes and becomes a known journalist. Tess makes friends in Africa and Australia and South America, and she speaks half a dozen languages by the time she’s eight. She goes to boarding school in France, like her mother did, and Rita and Claudine and Madame Asturias, being in retirement now, take care of her.

Anaïs wishes she could have her girl around her all the time, but Tess needs to go to school, while she needs to travel to foreign countries for her articles, and some places are just too dangerous for her child. She’s too young to be a stay-at-home-mum, and she doesn’t want to feel chained to a place. She has to be free, like a bird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hank Percy = Henry Percy (*1502) 
> 
> Polly = Mary Talbot (*1504) 
> 
> Bill = William Carey (*1500) 
> 
> Trina = Catherine Carey (*1524) 
> 
> Emery = Henry Carey (*1526) 
> 
> George’s boyfriend = Mark Smeaton (*1512)


	4. IV

She is 35 when she’s arrested. It’s a dictatorship, and she flirted with a politician to get some information for an article she’s writing, and they accuse her of being a spy. She’s sentenced to death by beheading, and the hours before her execution are the worst of her life. She writes to her daughter, her siblings, her friends, writes a short story that’ll win her a Nobel prize a year later and practices the last words she says before she kneels down, takes of her pearl necklace and waits for the final blow. It never comes.

•

The nightmares haunt her for years, the dry air, the dust dancing in front of her, the cold steel of the blade, kissing her next, before it’s swung back. Than the yelling, the heavy footsteps of soldiers, and the sound of a combat boot against the old wooden door. An army truck, an itchy wool blanket over her shoulders, the taste of red bull on her tongue, the milk faced private sitting opposite her looking at her like she’s going to faint.

I’ve had worse, she wants to tell him, it’s not nearly as bad as giving birth, but she can’t. It would be a lie. She often lays awake at night, listening to the soft snoring of her dog Urian and the humming of Tess, wondering if it’s just a dream, if she’s in heaven and her mind made up the story of a female journalist being rescued by a SWAT team during the first days of a war that never happened.

•

She stops writing for newspapers after that. Some publishing companies want to buy her autobiography, and she always dreamt of writing enough poems to fill a book, and so she settles in Paris with her daughter and her dog, in a small apartment in Belleville-Menilmontant with books and cushions on the floors and windowsills and posters instead of wallpapers. She’s back home, where she belongs, with her daughter and her literature, and sometimes, when she wanders through the streets of her youth, she’s a girl again with big dreams and a promising future.


End file.
